Surgical instrument management poses many challenges involving various aspects of organizing, storing, transporting, and sterilizing the wide range of surgical instruments typically in use in contemporary hospitals and other surgical units. A particular aspect of such management involves collecting various instruments together neatly, into organized arrays intended to support specific surgical procedures. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,229,420 to Smith for example, which provides a surgical instrument rack for managing ring-handled instruments. For further such examples, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,137,151 to Choate and U.S. Pat. No. 3,925,014 to Langdon. At least some of these racks allege certain advantages in terms of organizing surgical instruments for use and/or for cleaning and sterilization.
As for storing surgical instruments post sterilization, hospitals routinely use sterilization containers, which typically are rectangular aluminum boxes with removable lids. Example containers include GENESIS brand from Cardinal Health, and STERILCONTAINER brand from Aesculap. Surgical instruments may be collected together in such containers and autoclaved for sterilization. The sterilization containers are then stored until needed and used for transporting collections of surgical instruments to the operating room environment.